Adventures in Retail

“Retail? That can’t be that horrible, right?”

Sam and Natasha exchange doubtful glances that Steve misses as he scans the file.

“Uh, it’s not exactly how Macy’s used to be, Cap,” Sam says. Natasha nods. “Working in a retail store like this is basically hell on Earth.”

“Fitting for me then,” Steve mumbled, frowning over a bunch of numbers and names. “And Gimbel’s was much better, by the way. I always got harassed in Macy’s.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “Save it for the History Channel, you fuckin’ jerk.” Steve smiles brightly. He loves being surrounded by other New Yorkers. “This mission shouldn’t be that horrible. Simple intel extraction. In and out in six weeks.”

“We’re not hoping to magically find Pierce and stab this thing in the heart,” Natasha adds. “It’s not likely he’ll come to this base in Shelbyville, Indiana when he has literally hundreds of these little hidey holes around the world.” She stares at him long enough for Steve to look up from the file. “Don’t make this more dramatic than it needs to be, Rogers.”

Steve makes a face. “Me? Dramatic?”

They both frown a him.

His shoulders drop. They were right.

Steve pouts. “And why do I need to do this again?”

Sam levels him with a look. “I’m still working out Stark’s air security kinks with Rhodey and Misty. It’s taking a little bit longer to get the algorithm right.”

Natasha snorts. “Those are the only kinks you three are working out, Wilson?”

Steve’s envious of Sam’s complexion as he turns his glare on the petite redhead. He’s 100% sure Wilson’s blushing. “You sound like Tony. Hush.”

She smiles devilishly, holding up her hands. “I’m just jealous and trying to get in on the action! Can’t blame me for trying.”

Sam rubs the back of his neck, and there’s a small smile pulling at his lips. “Yeah, I’m pretty lucky. They’re great.”

Natasha’s smile gets a little more secretive before she drops it completely, turning to frown at Steve again. “Nothing dramatic. Mind your business. Intel and get out. Work on your customer service and try not to cry when people yell at you. It’ll happen every single day.”

Steve grunted. Retail was not going to be that bad.

-

“C-can I have a manager to register three, please?”

Bucky and Gabe turn to look at each other at the same time.

“I went last time,” Morita says unhelpfully. They ignore him.

”I’m gay,” Bucky whines. “This is a hate crime."

Gabe throws his hands up. “I’m black! That’s a hate crime, too!”

Bucky narrows his eyes.

Gabe narrows his.

“Fine!” Bucky pushes himself away from the desk with a loud, dramatic sigh. “I’ll do it. Fucking homophobes. I don’t want either of you speaking at my vigil.” They bully him out of the room as Bucky makes his way to the front of the store, making sure to pat down his hair and straighten out his name tag.

Bucky can feel Peter’s nerves before he even sees the poor kid. His back is to Bucky, and he’s visibly trembling at a red-faced, middle-aged woman with a toddler on her hip and two others horse playing nearby. She’s gesturing wildly and Peter is nodding furiously, shakily hitting buttons on the ancient computer. The cash drawer pops out unhelpfully and his computer freezes before printing out a comically blank receipt.

Peter freezes, and Bucky watches his shoulders droop before he utters something sheepishly to the angry customer in front of him. Bucky watches her eyes get wild as she throws a full on tantrum. The unnecessarily wild movements startle the small child in her arms, and the tot starts clutching her tighter and wailing. The kids running around seem to get even louder. A long line of irritated customers watch on boredly.

Bucky sighs.

Retail.

He speed walks up behind Peter, placing a hand on the kid’s shoulder. He jumps at Bucky’s touch, spinning around quickly. He visibly relaxes once he sees his manager.

“B-Bucky,” he breathes, brown eyes bright and nervous. “Thank god.”

“And just what is that supposed to mean, young man?”

“What’s the problem here, ma’am?” Bucky says, completely ignoring her.

She huffs and pushes a tuft of orange bangs away from her face. “I keep trying to explain to him,” she gives Peter a venomous glare that makes him shrink even smaller. Bucky squeezes his shoulder sympathetically. “That these coupons are good to use here.”

Bucky nods slowly, sliding his eyes over to Peter, who wisely takes that as his cue to explain his side of the story. “I know we have our ten-dollar compliance policy, Bucky, I swear,” he gulps and glances at the screen. Bucky looks past him to see a heavy 450-dollar order. Sixty percent of it is Bermuda shorts and flip flops. Bucky barely holds back a grimace. “And I did that. On everything I could. But it still wasn’t what she wanted.”

“The coupon says eighty percent off!” She yelled. The baby started crying louder. “I want my eighty percent off!”

Bucky sighs again.

Fucking retail.

“Okay, I think I know the problem here,” he says placatingly, looking between Peter and the woman with his best calm the fuck down face. “Could I see that coupon, ma’am?”

She huffs and fishes her phone out of her pocket, and Bucky worries the safety of the child squirming in her arms. “I just put it away,” she complained, and Bucky bites down on his tongue. Hard. Why the fuck would you put away a damn coupon before the fucking purchase was completed? She slaps the phone down on the counter with more force than necessary. Jubilee looks over from her register before turning back to her own customers.

“May I?” Bucky says. She holds out the phone for him to take with a cautious glance at Bucky’s prosthetic that he ignores completely, and he squints at the email.

A fake. Bucky knew it before he even laid eyes on the damn thing, but he’s not sure how anyone with two working brain cells would have ever thought this bullshit was legitimate. The colors were completely off, the typos were embarrassingly rampant, and it was through RetailMe-fucking-Not, for fucks sake.

“Alright,” he says brightly, gently pushing Peter out of the way to get to his register. “This is a fake coupon. We’ve gotten a lot of these lately,” he lies, because again who the fuck would fall for this shit? “But I’ll see what I can do.”

She finally deflates, but only slightly. Bucky can see the fight coming back into her stance. “Fine. But all I have is one hundred fifty in cash, and I’m not paying more than that.”

Peter lets out an indignant squeak. “T-this lane says card only!”

Bucky chances a sidelong glance at the growing line of customers. He winces as he sees it start to wrap around the women’s sundresses rack.

“No worries, kiddo,” he says. “Go open lane seven and let them know we only take card there because you don’t have access to a register right now, and doing cash when you don’t have the authorization to tends to complicate things even further.” He directs all of this directly towards the scared teenager in front of him, but he doesn’t miss the guilty shifting from foot to foot of the monster in front of him.

“Okay, Bucky,” he sighs, shuffling off slowly. “I’m sorry.”

Bucky’s fake grin gets a little tighter. He has half a mind to chew this woman out on the spot. No one should ever make Peter, the sweetest person on the planet, feel like that. “Don’t be, kid! It’s a learning experience!”

He watches him come to the other side of Jubilee, who just reaches over to pat his hand sympathetically.

Bucky nearly sheds a tear. He loves his kiddos.

“Cute kid, right?” He says, turning back to the troublesome customer in front of him. She looks increasingly more guilty by the minute, and Bucky cheers internally. “It’s his first job. He’s only been here a few weeks,” he informs her distractedly while he taps away on a manager override.

“A few weeks is long enough to know how to properly treat a customer,” she bites back.

“Not when you’re barely sixteen, ma’am,” he shoots back. “I can give you thirty percent off, and we can hold anything you need us to until you can pay for the rest of it.”

Her jaw drops. “T-that’s ridiculous!”

Bucky shrugs. “That’s company policy,” he lies. It’s not. He could give her this whole damn thing for free, but he sure as hell wasn’t about to do that after she treated Peter like shit.

She stares at him, hard. Bucky stares back. He slept next to scarier snakes in fucking Afghanistan. He wasn’t about to pussy out to some soccer mom.

Finally, she sighs, putting the child on the ground. She fishes out a card and hands it over to Bucky, which what the fuck? Why was she making this so fucking hard? “Fine. Here. I don’t have time for this.”

Bucky checks her out without another glance in her direction, stuffing a handful of expired coupons into one of her many bags next to her receipt. She snatches them and stalks off, horribly-behaved kids in tow.

“Thank you for your time! Come again!”

Bucky’s fake smile stays in place all the way until she crosses the threshold. He drops it and closes the lane, sighing in relief as he notices the dwindling line. Thank God for Jubilee, Kate, and Kamala. He makes a mental note to order a pizza right before close today.

“Peter, could you come here for a second after that purchase, buddy?” Bucky calls. He looks over at how concentratedly Peter places five onesies in a bag.

“Of course, Bucky!” He watches the kid ring up his guests seamlessly and hand them their hefty bag with a coupon, receipt, and a smile. He bounds over to Bucky like a happy puppy, who briefly wonders how he could have bounced back from something that traumatic in such a short period of time.

“You alright?” Bucky says. Peter’s grin wilts. The kid shrugs.

“I guess so,” he says. He rubs the back of his neck

“I’m sorry about that. Some of these people really are animals, you know. Just gotta get used to it.”

Peter nods obediently. “Right. I’ll handle it next time.”

“No!” Bucky holds his hands out. Peter blinks. “But never tolerate that. Me and Gabe and Jim are here to deal with that. Trust me.” He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “How’s your boyfriend doing?”

At the mention of said boyfriend, a cute teenager that works at the Little Tokyo, Peter blushes bright red. Bucky grins. “M-Miles? He’s not my boyfriend.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow. “So you’re telling me he brings everyone sesame chicken for all of their shifts?”

Peter fidgets. “T-they make a lot! There’s always extra.”

“Yeah, I’m sure. When are you gonna put him out of his misery and make it official? I’m not getting any younger here.”

Peter opens his mouth to probably deliver some smart-ass comment about how they both know Bucky isn’t getting any younger, but a loud  whistle interrupts them both. Bucky turns to see the man in question, Miles Morales, standing by the entrance. He’s beaming, and there’s a thin sheet of sweat on his brown skin, probably from the food. He pulls his visor off, and his curly hair moves with the motion comically.

“Hey, Spider-boy! You ready? I don’t have all day, and Kaplan said he can’t hold onto our froyo for much longer!”

He looks back to see an unabashed smile on Peter’s face. Bucky snorts.

“You can go on your fifteen, Peter.”

The kid is already ten feet away from Bucky by the time he’s halfway through his sentence.

“Thanks, Bucky!” He calls, reaching for Miles’ hand.

-

Bucky opens the door to the managerial office with a flourish. Gabe and Morita look up from their game of cards to inspect him. “Crisis averted?” Gabe asks.

“Yeah, but the doctors said I’ll need this for the rest of my life. She was ruthless,” Bucky teases, waving his prosthetic around.

Morita frowns. “That joke is really dark, Bucky.”

Bucky makes a face as he sits back down. “Suck my dick, Jim. It’s funny.” He reclines back in his chair and does a quick scan of the monitors. “She came in with one of those bullshit coupons demanding we give her the Pixie Chinos for damn near seven dollars. Ridiculous.”

Gabe snorts. “Had one of those the other day. It’s getting a little outta hand. Pierce might have to come and release some sort of corporate statement asking people to please leave us the fuck alone about eighty percent off coupons.”

Bucky grunts his agreement. “This lady was a real piece of work. Poor Peter. She marches right up to his lane with a crisp hundred and demands three hundred dollars off of a four fifty purchase. Thought he was gonna pass out, he looked so nervous.”

Morita frowns. “Is he alright?”

Big, sad, brown eyes flood Bucky’s memory, and he forces a casual shrug. “He will be. She damn sure isn’t the last of her kind.” Bucky shakes his head. “His little boyfriend is probably cheering him up with some frozen yogurt and hickies right now. He’s fine.”

“Aww,” Gabe and Morita coo at the same time. Bucky rolls his eyes.

“You two are ridiculous.”

“Hey! Don’t hate on the baby gays just because you’re an old, miserable, lonely fuck. They’re precious,” Gabe says, pointing his finger at Bucky accusingly.

Bucky folds his arms. “Your wife wouldn’t appreciate you calling me old. I’m snitching.” Morita snorts. “And besides, I have to stay single! Who else is gonna keep this place from going tits up when soccer moms come in and try to run shit?”

Morita shakes his head. “You’re right. Your talents are being wasted on retail, Barnes. Go be a negotiator or special ops.”

Bucky smiles, willing himself to calm down and quiet the sound of gunfire and screams replaying in his head. “You’re funny. I’m happy right where I am, dealing with assholes right in the middle of Bumfuck Nowhere.”

Gabe grunts. “Just saying. You could be making a helluva lot more money dealing with international assholes.” Bucky’s quiet, and they drop it. “By the way, you have to do a training on Saturday. New guy from D.C. is coming in.”

Bucky frowns. “You hired him without an interview?”

Gabe shrugged. “You see how hectic it’s getting. All of our closes within the past week have been past 10:30. We’re sorely understaffed.”

Bucky sighs. “Fine. But when this guy comes in and kills all of us because no one did a proper background check, I’m not gonna say anything.”

Gabe and Morita laugh, going back to their card game. “You’re too paranoid, Barnes,” Morita says, slapping down a five that has Gabe letting out an impressive string of explicatives. “It’ll be fine.”

Bucky grunts. He’ll believe it when he sees it.